On August 9th, I traveled down to the county courthouse in West Chester to respond to a summons for jury duty. My past experience with jury duty was not very memorable, in that I spent the day reading and checking my emails while sitting in a jury room. I was not chosen to serve on a jury so I was excused at the end of the day.
In this case, I, along with about 100 other perspective jurors, were separated into two groups after being assigned a number. (I was 57). Eventually, we were told that the people to the speaker's left who were chosen, would serve on a civil case which would last 2-3 weeks, while those on the right would serve on a criminal trial which would take about 2-3 days. I was among those who wished to be on the other side.
After a few informational videos, my group was taken to court room 11. We were then asked a series of questions by the lawyers, one for the plaintiff, two for the defense, to determine various possible reasons to be not chosen, such as familiarity with the lawyers, the potential witnesses, the family suing as well as the medical professionals being sued, and, whether a 2-3 week commitment would be an undo hardship.
As it turned out, those jurors who had vacations planned or needed to take a child to college, or were themselves going to college, were eliminated first. Very few people with work reasons or even family care taking obligations were excused.
Finally, as the day ended, 12 of use were selected to be a part of the next process.
The next day we reported to the same court room to await the next group to be questioned and interviewed. At first, the nine of us kept to ourselves, mostly playing games or reading on the phone, a few with books. But as time passed, we began to chat so that by the afternoon when the next batch of chosen jurors were brought in, we were rather boisterous. It was kind of funny to see the faces of the newbies as they joined us, and in the next few hours. A few of them seemed almost alarmed at our perceived lack of respect for our temporary home. But when it became clear that the judge still wanted another few people from which to select the eventual jurors, and the recently arrived folks heard our story of being in their place yesterday, we began to meld into a bigger, shared situation, group.
Eventually, a few more people joined us, swelling our number to 26, from which 16 would be selected, 12 jurors and 4 alternates. We were then called to a separate room for questioning by the lawyers, then reassembled in the court room for the finale. I was chosen, and assigned the unlucky (in this case) number seven. By now it was pushing 4:00, so the judge sent us home, to return on day 3 to start hearing testimony.
The parking garage is across the street from the courthouse. Everyday, we drove up to level 3, pulled up to the wooden gate which indicated jurors, and were told to park on level 7, the very top, exposed to the weather. As time went by, there were occasional days when we were told to park on level 6, or the attendant said nothing. On days with rain or strong sunshine, many of us parked on 6 to avoid the wrath of the elements. Curiously, by the end, most of us parked on 6 out of belief that we were entitled to do so.
The general details of the trial is that a baby was born with a bad outcome, and the parents were suing one of the doctors and the attending nurse. The plaintiff's lawyer was a bit of a showman, using white boards on an easel to make some of his points. More than once we secretly planned to remove his boards from the court room, or at least make sure all his markers were dried up. But he was also very good, alert to any fact, trivial or important, to turn into proof that the damage to the baby's brain was caused by a poorly executed medical procedure, or a missed sign that trouble was brewing.
Since the plaintiff went first, I must admit that it seemed like a slam dunk. All kinds of signs were missed which may have resulted in an earlier birth which might have eliminated the extent of very low heart beat which lasted about 12 minutes, a situation which was directly caused by a placental abruption. After a few extensive testimonies by defense "experts", and testimony from the defendants themselves, I was eager to hear what direction the defense would take, above and beyond the defendant's statements that everything was done that could be done, once the baby's heart tones crashed.
Unfortunately, it took the rest of week one, all of week two (minus Monday when there was a Covid scare among the jurors that prevented court to be held, but which turned out to be a false alarm), and half of week three. To say that the process seemed interminable would be an understatement. In the meantime, like many of my co-jurors, I was working most days on the weekend, and driving from West Chester to work in Wyomissing to arrive around 6:00 then closing the store at 10:00, then home, then back to court the next day again. While I only did double duty twice each week, I only had off from both court and work twice from August 9 to September 3. It was a long month, no less so because sitting in a court room listening to testimony that ranged from interesting to boring to extremely repetitive on pseudo comfortable chairs, was no picnic for my mind, or back.
Finally, in week four, after more than 3 hours of final statements by the various lawyers which summed up the same points we had just heard for 3 and a half weeks, the judge charged us with the law and our responsibilities and sent us to deliberate at 4:30 on Friday, 9/3. We were quick to find the doctor innocent of negligence. This, to me, was a very good measurement of how seriously we all took our jobs as jurors, as I am sure that many of them thought as I did, in the beginning, that everyone messed up. But we listened to all the testimony, well at least most of it as there were a few times when various jurors slipped off to sleepyland, and did not come to any conclusions before hand.
With a civil case, there only has to be 10 of 12 jurors to make a decision, it does not have to be unanimous. The defense's experts focused on after the fact analysis of MRI's done of the baby's brain to make the claim that the child had a problem in utero which caused the bad outcome, and that the mother's placenta may not have been as nourishing as it could have been. I was not convinced of these explanation in light of all the doctor's reports at the time of delivery that stated that the damage was caused at birth, so when we voted 8 to 4 for the nurse in question, I was one of the four.
After 2 hours of deliberations, and another vote which tallied at 9 to 3, the judge called us back to the court room and asked us if we were close to a decision. Our initial response was yes seeing that we were one vote shy of the necessary 10 to acquit, but when he asked if we could finish in 15 minutes, we all knew that wasn't going to happen. At that point, he told is to go home and come back on Tuesday (Monday being Labor Day). Needless to say, no one left the court room happy in the knowledge that we would start a 5th week in court.
Out in the parking lot, a few of use were chatting. One of the 3 had become upset during the last 30 minutes of deliberation, even going so far as to say, "OK, I change my vote, let's go home". Again, to our collective credit, we did not allow her to do that, even though there was not one person in that room who didn't want the ordeal to end. As we talked, I tried to make my fellow juror realize that I was also one of the 3, that I certainly wanted to not come back next week, but I wasn't going to change my vote, that I truly felt that the nurse missed some signs, and that I certainly wasn't going to cave in just to be free. She seemed less upset by my words and those of another juror who was part of the nine.
When we parted, I called work to tell them I would not be coming in at that point, knowing I wouldn't arrive until at least 8:00, and while I was chatting, my phone rang, unknown number. After hanging up, I dialed my voice mail to see if a message had been left. And there was:
This is the assistant to the judge for whom you are a juror. The parties settled, so you don't have to come back next week, you are excused.
It was over! Yet in an extremely unsatisfactory manner. After 4 weeks of repetition, at least a dozen white boards, two video testimonies, 2 testimonies that were read, various experts that claimed that everyone involved in the case was wrong, and that every expert on the other side was only offering an opinion because they were being paid to do so, after an agonizing 20 minutes where the child (now 3 years old) appeared in court for us to see her limited abilities, and heart wrenching testimony from the mother who feels that her child does not know that she is her mother, after all that and more, we were not asked to render a decision!
Was it a colossal waste of time? It is hard not to say yes. Did I learn some disappointing things about our medical professionals, about how medical malpractice cases are conducted, about how the legal process involves testimony and topics that are not discussed, and finally about whether the whole point of the trial was to find the truth? I will comment on some of those questions in my next post, but it is certainly clear that the truth was not the goal of the trial for which I served as juror this past month.
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